Modern inorganic farming methods are necessary for feeding the world. If the whole world switched to organic farming, there would be cataclysmic mass starvation.
Organic food is a misnomer.
Or rather, it's a label that comes with extra guarantees besides non-GMO, that not all make sense, and is there to make a quick buck on the upper middle class and the hippy types.
What's actually neither GMO nor Organic is plain food stuff, you know, the plain food that the planet produces, maybe with a few pesticides or some treatment that's a-ok, but doesn't qualify as Organic.
Of this (and of its Organic sibling) some of it is evolutionary created and consumed by humans for 10s of thousands of years, and other is cross-bread in a slow and limited process (e.g. not being able to do stuff like take fruit-fly genes to put into bananas) by farmers -- and still tested and consumed over centuries.
GMOs, on the other hand, are not "science" in the same way that while Donald Knuth or Djikstra is Computer Science, J2EE or the latest foobar.js some company pushes are not.
They are of course backed by science, but what they really are is applied technology as driven by business interests.
And often the same business interests that could (and some would) put poison in kid's milk, if it made for a cheaper product and higher margin.
I'd rather have food stuff that passed evolutionary tests, than the latest gene-mix from the inventors and pushers of HFCS and several other crappy quality food chemistry substances that increase their margins...
Then there's the whole seed-control with IP rights and forcing farmers to rebuy them (and not save them) year over year can of worms...
The seed control stuff is really just Monsanto being incredibly shitty at PR. See NPR[1]; also, in the past 10, 20 years or so, there's only been one lawsuit between Monsanto and farmers[2] (news flash: it was the farmers that sued Monsanto). Also, organic seeds get patented too, it's not just GMO seeds[3].
I also highly suggest you read William Saletan's article on GMO's[4]
Another fun fact: organic doesn't mean evolution-based. Mutagenesis and specially-grown cultivars have become an increasingly popular way to produce foods that get the organic label; it's only really transgenesis (gene splicing) that you can't say is organic.
To be clear: I'm not denying that there are despicable business practices out there (hell, did you know that there's actually a black market for stuff like olive oil and fish?), and that there is definitely something to be said for the US-EU split on the proper way to regulate GMO's, but organic is generally just a stupid concept.
[1] (http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top...)
[2] (http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-or...)
[3] (https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/08/07/challengin...)
[4] (http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...)
That's plainly incorrect.
Since the mid‑1990s, Monsanto indicates that it has filed suit against 145 individual U.S. farmers for patent infringement and/or breach of contract in connection with its genetically engineered seed but has proceeded through trial against only eleven farmers, all of which it won. The Center for Food Safety has listed 90 lawsuits through 2004 by Monsanto against farmers for claims of seed patent violations. (Wikipedia)
>Another fun fact: organic doesn't mean evolution-based. Mutagenesis and specially-grown cultivars have become an increasingly popular way to produce foods that get the organic label; it's only really transgenesis (gene splicing) that you can't say is organic.
I already addressed that though. Natural mutagenesis is still evolution (heck, it's one of the very engines of evolution), and I'm all for slow methods to produce foods (even if they cross species) over gene splicing, especially with the current (BS) level of knowledge that the gene splicers have over the possible consequences of what they are doing and the lack of scientific rigor when big business are involved.
>but organic is generally just a stupid concept.
Don't disagree much with that. Also noted that I don't particularly care for food with the label "organic" (which is an industry on its own, when it comes to certification, higher prices, etc.). Plain ole food-stuff is enough.
I also favour "organic" eggs, because the chicken are treated better, even if that is not detectable in the quality of the eggs themselves.
But I agree that mostly "organic" is just a scam.
Agree.
> Modern inorganic farming methods are necessary for feeding the world. If the whole world switched to organic farming, there would be cataclysmic mass starvation.
Most certainly false! By reducing meat consumption or increasing labor intensity organic agriculture could easily support the whole world.
For many of the places where food security is needed the most, increased soil quality, as supported by organic agriculture, would help a lot. http://www.unep.org/pdf/SmallholderReport_WEB.pdf
Really? Care to elaborate on that?
The article lists the many reasons why organic foods are better than non-organic ones. You should read it.
Pesticides, yummy.
It doesn't inspire much confidence on the other hand that the pushers of GMOs are huge conglomerates that control seeds (similarly to IP rights and DRM), would sell any BS for a quick buck, and are not that dissimilar to the tobacco industry that testified that "smoking is not harmful" and sponsored tons of studies in the 70s and 80s (with real scientists, universities et al) to prove that point.
But there is tons of food that is neither Organic (certified and pushed by Whole Foods etc) nor GMO.
You know, it's just food. And it's what we've been having for years, and 100% of what we do have now (I never buy Organic anyway, except if it's something not available as general foodstuff).
Organic doesn't mean pesticide free, far from it. Organic farms (especially big factory farms) use pesticides very liberally - "natural" pesticides. They don't have to be safer than synthetics in any way, you don't have to use less, they just have to be natural. So we spray crops with stuff like Copper or (mostly in the past) Rotenone[1].
We've stupidly classified all natural poisons as "non-toxic" and all synthetics as "horribly dangerous". Nature is full of stuff you don't want to spray on your food.
“The unfortunate truth is that until organic farming can rival the production output of conventional farming, its ecological cost due to the need for space is devastating. As bad as any of the pesticides and fertilizers polluting the world's waterways from conventional agriculture are, it's a far better ecological situation than destroying those key habitats altogether.”
Edit: words